Patriotic Italian Charms

Although the writer of the following article remembers well the year of the Bicentennial in the U.S., she does not recall seeing a lot of patriotic jewelry during that same year. She did, however, visit many shops selling jewelry during the year of 1776, the year of the Bicentennial.  Those shops, located in New Mexico, carried mostly Native American jewelry. Of course, the Native Americans had great respect for the land that is now called the United States of America. In light of that respect, one might find reason to view the Native American jewelry as a type of patriotic jewelry.

Can the handle on a military sword be considered a piece of patriotic jewelry? If so, then a sword once used by the U.S. Marines might represent an early example of patriotic jewelry. That sword had a very special handle. That sword handle had a design that jewelers have tried to copy. Below readers will find the history behind that sword.

In April of 1805, Lieutenant Presley O’Brannon led a land assault on a fort in the Tripoli harbor. The brave Marines managed to capture that fort and to call for the lowering of the flag of Tripoli. In its place O’Bannon called for display of the Stars and Stripes. That was the first time that the raising of the Stars and Stripes demonstrated a land victory for American forces, forces summoned to fight on a part of the Old World.

The natives who fought O’Bannon and his men carried swords with a Mamaluke-styled handle. When the Marine Corps awarded O’Bannon for his victory, they gave him a sword with the same sort of handle. That sword and handle combination then became the standard style for the sword presented to Marine Corps officers.

In other words, the 19th Century Marine officers carried a type of patriotic jewelry. Later, when officers no longer carried swords, the handle on that old sword provided one jeweler with a source of inspiration. That jeweler incorporated elements of the sword design into a Marine Corps ring.

Now that ring is given to every Marine Corps officer. That piece of patriotic jewelry  displays the completion of a rigorous Officer’s Training Program. During that Program, the prospective officers must learn how to strategize, how to read maps and how to lead a land assault from the sea.

The demanding requirements in that program have been recorded in a series of yearbooks, yearbooks made available to graduates of the Training Program. The information in one yearbook has motivated one writer to introduce young readers of fiction to some Marine Corps history. The writer has played with detailing parts of the Training Program.

The writer has understood that she needs to have a main character. She has thus written a back story for one possible character. During that back story the writer’s imagined character, a former football player and a musician, wears a Marine Corp ring.

The writer has made her character a very patriotic American. The writer has viewed her character as a man who relished the historic significance of 1776, the year of the Bicentennial in the United States. Yet the author does not picture her character as a man who might have flashed a very patriotic piece of jewelry. Her character shows his patriotic spirit with his unmistakable, Marine Corps stance.